Roasted thrushes with "la salvia'n
culo"

(Tordi arrosto con la "salvia'n culo")

A)

8 thrushes well fat, ready to be cooked

B)

A thick blended mixture composed by:
5-6 garlic cloves
10 juniper berries
the leaves of two branches of rosemary
and the leaves of two big bunches of sage
10-12 fresh olives without stone
a pinch of salt
4 spoons of olive oil

4 spoons of olive oil

6 spoons of peanut oil

8 big leaves of sage

salt and pepper

spices

¼ of white wine

Mix very well 4 spoons of table salt, 1 spoon of pepper and ½
amount of spices in order to obtain a homogeneous mixture.
Then take a mincer with blades and put inside all the ingredients indicated
at point B) and mix everything until you will obtain a quite thick purée.
Take the thrushes, salt and pepper them uniformly both inside and outside,
by helping with your fingers.
Then spread them uniformly, inside and outside, with abundant blended
mixture composed by herbs.
Then put in the belly of each thrush a big leave of sage (from this action
the sentence "la salvia'n culo"), then lay them in a soup-tureen,
bathe with olive oil, cover with a pellicle and put them in the refrigerator
for a night in order to flavour.

Take them once again the day after and lay them, without putting them
one over the other, in a baking tin, adding the sort of sauce which has
been formed, with the oil, in the soup-tureen during the night.
Bathe them with peanut oil, cover them with a tinfoil, put them in the
oven for about 20 minutes at a temperature of 200 C°. At the right
time remove the tinfoil, bathe the thrushes with the wine, turn them in
order to mix them a little bit, let evaporate for 5 minutes, then switch
off the heat of the oven, but leave the thrushes some minutes more in
order to make uniform the level of cooking between the inside and the
outside. Then take out from the oven and serve them, together with mixed
salads dressed with oil and vinegar, but the "real" ones: this
is the best presentation for this type of roasted meats.

Even if the hunting is an activity nearly to disappear,
due to the ignominies of the "cannibals" of the double-barrelled
gun which have, together with the fertilisers in the agriculture, destroyed
the fauna and disgraced the figure, once mythical, of the hunter and wildly
outraged the very ancient rituals of the hunting, such a roast (if there
are thrushes available) widely reconciles and justifies also a violent act,
like the murder of a small bird, which is repugnant. The human being is
always the same, even if you want to see him from different points of view:
fundamentally ignoble, arrogant, violent. But we should say that he is able
to self-forgive any disgraces, because he has committed many infamies against
the animals, plants and environment in general, but we think that these
actions do not reach the level of wickedness of the ones he has committed
(and continues to commit) against himself (without going to far in time
and space let's think to Bosnia, Somalia, Ruanda, docet).